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/ 15 October 2003

Shelter from the storm

Beyond the protracted anti-retroviral debate in South Africa is a worrying lack of attention to the "shelter and services needs" of families with members who are HIV-positive or living with Aids. Local government has been fingered as the villain for failing to deliver basic services — it must, argues a prominent scholar, get its act together.

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/ 15 October 2003

Weekend paper wars begin in KZN

Media 24, Naspers’s print arm, has launched an assault on rival Independent Newspapers’s dominance of the Durban newspaper market. Under the title <i>Weekend Witness</i>, the Pietermaritzburg-based <i>Natal Witness</i> has introduced a Saturday paper aimed at Durban, the coast and inland KwaZulu-Natal.

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/ 15 October 2003

Everywhere and nowhere

Not many days go by in Baghdad without a claimed sighting of Saddam Hussein, recklessly turning up in close proximity to the American forces, or rallying the faithful in his old haunts, depending on who is spinning the story. The multiplicity of sightings is all the more strange given that there was very little chance of ever seeing Saddam in the flesh while he was in power.

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/ 15 October 2003

At bursting point

The tide of Jamaican women entering Britain with their stomachs full of cocaine is pushing the country’s already overcrowded female prison system to breaking point. An investigation has established that the long sentences being served by the 450 Jamaican couriers are stretching British resources to the limit.

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/ 15 October 2003

A window on Mbeki’s soul

The window that is opened on the political soul of President Thabo Mbeki in his weekly letter published in ANC Today offers an occasionally disturbing view. And most disturbingly, writes Sam Sole, he sets his face absolutely against debate and the consideration of criticisms.

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/ 15 October 2003

Repentant rogue DBC Pierre wins Booker

Now, at least, he can start to pay that money back. The many creditors of the novelist DBC Pierre were given a crumb of comfort last night when the self-confessed serial ”cheating bastard” won literature’s most famous prize — the Man Booker — in an extraordinary final twist to an already bizarre story.

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/ 15 October 2003

FA probes Arsenal, Man United

English Football Association (FA) officials have confirmed they are investigating the Arsenal and Manchester United response to charges following the fracas after their Premiership clash at Old Trafford last month. Arsenal have been accused of failing to control their players.